The overall instructional goal of pharmacology and pharmacotherapeutics courses is to provide the physician assistant with a firm understanding of the effects of therapeutically important drugs, from a molecular to a behavioral level of organization. These courses discuss therapeutic strategies, and new types of drugs, as well as the clinical implications and contraindications. Lectures are designed on an organ system basis with emphasis on distinctive uses of drugs. Although large numbers of drugs are available on the market, only a few prototype agents have been selected for intensive study for this course.